About Us

Over 250 million people use Chinese social media, many every day. We manually distill its best, most interesting stories. So you can sip them like your morning tea, instead of chugging from a fire hose.

Tea Leaf Nation is an e-magazine founded in 2011. We aspire to be a must-read source for China experts of all stripes–journalists, diplomats, academics, analysts–while remaining fun and accessible to casual China watchers. Our founding team, based in China and the United States, scours Chinese social media every day to spot trends, gauge sentiment, and carry major news stories one level deeper.

Above all, we hope to deliver content that brings China to life, humanizing the countless millions behind the text. We don’t use algorithms or bots, just hard work and intuition based on many years spent experiencing and studying China. That means each story is handpicked, just like the best tea. We hope you enjoy our brew.

FAQs

Who are you?

David first encountered China as a Peace Corps Volunteer ten years ago. Since then, he has lived, worked and studied in Beijing, Chongqing and Hong Kong. While at Harvard Law School, he was co-president of the Harvard Asia Law Society. He lives in Washington, D.C.

Jimmy hails from the shores of China’s northern seas. He has lived abroad for many years in the U.S. and Canada. He was a co-president of the Harvard Asia Law Society where he learned much about the art of tea leaf reading. He currently lives in China.

Rachel traces her ancestry to Southern China. She spent much of her childhood memorizing Chinese poetry. After long stints in New York, New Haven and Cambridge, she has returned to China to bear witness to its great transformation. She is currently based in China.

Managing Editor

Liz Carter: Liz is a DC-based China-watcher and the author and translator of a number of Chinese-English textbooks available on amazon.cn. She and her cat Desmond relocated to DC from Beijing, where she studied contemporary Chinese literature at Peking University, after learning that HBO was planning to adapt Game of Thrones for television. She writes at abigenoughforest.com and tweets from @withoutdoing.